


When Death By Chocolate Is Not Just a Metaphor

by brutti_ma_buoni



Category: Black Books
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-15
Updated: 2015-10-15
Packaged: 2018-04-26 13:01:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5005768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brutti_ma_buoni/pseuds/brutti_ma_buoni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Careful where you rant, when there's chocolate in the air. Bernard is totally the man to heed that warning. Isn't he?</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Death By Chocolate Is Not Just a Metaphor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tish/gifts).



“You don’t find it at all repugnant? This Death by Chocolate? This Cake that is Food of the Devil?” Bernard was doing the hand gestures again. Always with the hand gestures. Fran admired it, up to a point (the point where she started laughing, usually, though sometimes the point where she started drinking. Or both, clearly). Today, he at least wasn’t absently grasping a slice of pizza so old it was on its third generation of anchovy, so the deliciously chocolatey scent of the kitchen was unmarred by his wagglings. 

Manny looked, also as always, somewhere between perplexed and indifferent. And, in this case, chocolatey round the edges. Like a delicious Christmas treat in the form of a baffled bookseller. Fran made a mental note not to lick him. That never turned out well. “No, Bernard,” he was saying. “I think people love to exaggerate about chocolate. Because it’s so delicious, we can all agree-“

“I don’t,” said Bernard, in a flagrant, _flagrant_ denial of truth that managed to surprise Fran a little, which was rare. “I think it’s disgusting, our craven bowing before the god of chocolate. I think the Incas had it right. Or was it the Aztecs? Or whoever it was that thought death and chocolate should go hand in hand.”

Manny had two cakes in the oven, and three more on the side awaiting icing. (Fran had asked what, exactly, the chocolate fest was in aid of, and received a confused answer about keeping up with the latest culinary trends, which Bernard plausibly translated as, “He fancies that Jeneeee woman and is cooking every one of her repellent calorie-bombs to show her indifferent Instagram feed his futile, undying love.”) Other than that, and a certain amount of floury, buttery, greaseproofy mess, the kitchen looked pretty much as usual. Cleaner, possibly.

So Fran felt wholly justified in responding to the sudden eruption of a death-deity from the oven with a little bit of a squeak. Quite a bit of one, even. More of a full-throated scream, some might say. Whatever. It was a surprise, was the point, and reacting to a surprise was _perfectly_ justifiable. 

The creature was perhaps eight feet high, and its head scraped the low ceiling when it (rudely) shoved Manny to the ground and stood upon his supine form, whetting a stone knife. Also rudely, it ignored his cries of, “Um, erm, I say? What?” (Eight foot deities can carry that kind of thing off without looking like fake-ignoring fools. Fran envied it.) It was the brown of proper cocoa - the bitter kind Fran’s granny used to make her drink and pretend was as nice as hot chocolate – and its glossy, chocolatey arms were scabbed and scarred, painted in designs that looked like knives and might possibly have been daubed in its own blood. (Or, looking on the bright side, a nice 70% cocoa solids single-estate chocolate, the kind that’s mostly a real treat but sometimes makes you go looking for some Dairy Milk to take the taste away.) Its face was just a mouth, an open screeching mouth of dark Bournville, a tongue of Dairy Milk, teeth like chocolate almonds. It howled, a curdling howl of loathing and triumph. Its breath, sweet as ganache, filled the kitchen.

Fran was torn, let it be clear, between running away and trying to nibble just a finger or two as she went. She wasn’t a neat-cocoa fan, true, but the rest looked damn tasty to someone who had been awaiting the results of Manny’s dilatory baking for several hours now. 

Bernard, however, always knew how to deal with terrifying supernatural manifestations, and it never involved running away. (Mostly, of course, because he didn’t notice they were terrifying supernatural manifestations, but simply as other beings. And he never liked other beings.) “Oh, hello. What do you want?” he said, boredly. 

Judging by the proper double-take the spectre gave, it wasn’t used to annoyed indifference as a response to its apparition. “You summoned me, gave me freedom!” it said, with a definite edge of miffedness. “Let me lay waste your enemies, feast on their hearts, drown them in sacred theobroma and take their heads as my game tokens.”

There was definitely a moment where Bernard considered it. The nameless horror bent down and drew back Manny’s head. The stone knife materialised in a new position, pressed to Manny’s throat. Or, more like pressed to his beard, but Fran assumed shaving wasn’t the Thing’s intent. Manny’s throat was pretty effectively buffered by fluff, but not against razor-edged sacred weaponry.

Bernard looked on with a mix of indifference and irritation. “What are you doing to my troll, there? I need him to feed the books.” After a pause, when the knife was not withdrawn a millimetre, he added, “No, seriously, I mean it. And I reckon his cake will be pretty good too if you let him finish.”

The creature paused again. It was hard to diagnose bafflement in something so wholly inhuman of appearance, but Fran felt it was the best word for describing the emotion it was feeling. It reminded her of Mrs Hunter’s face, the time she asked Bernard to order in a Maeve Binchy, and had to be rescued by Manny rappelling down the drainpipe and subduing Bernard with Mace. Baffled, a bit annoyed. Definitely frustrated. “But you summoned me! You understand! You wanted to bring down the vileness of humanity and their naked worship of the food of the gods!”

“Well,” said Bernard, paying more attention than usual to a customer. “In one sense, yes, clearly that’s always a good one. But, in a very real sense, also no. I was just, you know, venting. As one does. Without intent.”

The eyeless chocolate deity gave Bernard what Fran could only interpret as a Hard Stare. He blushed a bit, and shuffled his feet. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. Your wrath is magnificent. The way you hate people, I can respect that kind of emotion, a hundred percent. But, maybe tone it down a bit? Manny’s just a harmless cocoa-worshipping troll.”

He took a swig from the bottle of Moldovan brandy that was his latest venting-fuel of choice. The creature’s non-eyes followed the move. The ghastly mouth sniffed, tasting the air. It paused. “Well.” It shuffled in turn, dropping Manny to the floor and vanishing the sacrificial knife somehow. “I mean. The ritual murder thing isn’t all I do. I- You know, I like to get out into the community.”

“Mhm,” said Bernard, sympathetically. He scrabbled casually for a mug not filled with toenail clippings or cactus, and poured a good slug of Miroslav’s finest. “I bet it gets you down, right? The way everyone goes on and on about chocolate as the food of love, yeah? The way it’s sold as ‘naughty’? Those diet chocolate bars?”

“Malteasers,” said the creature, in a small voice, slumping onto the rickety kitchen chair Bernard indicated. “The lighter way to enjoy—Oh, what’s the bloody point in anything?” It took a slug of brandy. Coughed, emitting a small fireball, and went back to empty the mug. 

As it turned out, eyeless horror deities have fairly low tolerance for 50% proof bootlegged Moldovan firewater. The creature slumped in its chair after not more than half a bottle. Manny gave a small whimper of relief and went for a lie down on a cleaner part of the kitchen floor. Fran looked at Bernard. Bernard shrugged. 

"What do you suggest we do with the deadly deity you summoned, Bernard," she asked. Perhaps a touch tetchily, in truth. "Before it wakes up with a crashing hangover and tries to chop Manny into spillikins, I mean."

"I don't suggest anything," he said, waving the mostly-empty bottle around again. "I'm not a problem-solver. I'm a problem- _maker_ , and proud of it, Fran."

She considered slugging him with something painful. But he had just saved their lives, albeit from a threat entirely of his own making. Besides, he had a look-

"Although," said Bernard. Yep, there it was. "Although I do think that given we've got an unconscious god made entirely of chocolate, the solution may not be far to seek. I mean, he looks pretty edible to me-"

It was awesome. It was the greatest solution to anything, anywhere, ever. Fran had to eat several pounds of delicious chocolate to save the world. Or herself, whatever. 

"I should say severing the head will probably do it," Bernard advised from the Olympian viewpoint of someone who doesn't even like Green & Blacks. "But you might eat anything that looks like it could be sentient, just to be sure. We can melt the rest down for truffles, Manny can sell them on the street in the old London way, you know the sort of thing."

Manny nodded. He might have had something to say, but it was obscured by the mouthful he had just taken of the deity's right hand. Quick work, for a man who had been a quivering wreck moments earlier. 

"See?" said Fran, through a fair wodge of chocolate almonds and a faint hint of vanilla spice. "Chocolate's the best remedy."

She could see Bernard struggling against the urge to rant. But even Bernard had to accept defeat sometimes. Summoning two rage-fuelled chocolate deities in one day? Looks like carelessness.


End file.
